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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Will Mark Reynolds be the Yankees Ichiro of 2014?

There are whispers across the Yankiverse that the Retrieval Empire will try to move Ichiro Suzuki this winter. Ahhh, as if it were so easy! But such a move requires a lackey. In a perfect Yankee universe - sort of like 1959, when Kansas City functioned as our Waylan Smithers - we would trade Ichiro to the Rakuten Golden Eagles in exchange for the rights to Masahiro Tanaka. Neat, tidy, perfect. They get an icon. We get a pitcher. Ahhh...

Of course, then the Yankees would need to sign somebody just as useless, so fans can re-enact the glorious team tradition of going the entire season wondering why we bothered.

Which brings me to Mark Reynolds.

I've seen otherwise semi-right-minded bloggers and hawking the idea of signing Reynolds to play 3B and 1B next year, based on the home runs he hit in September. They claim that he did well in his month with the Yankees (after Cleveland released him.) Well, he batted .230 and struck out on a Granderson scale. Dear God, I can't imagine a worse move, unless it was to extend Ichiro himself, maybe give him a five-year.

Reynolds seems to be a good guy. Maybe you could argue he helps a team, according to the Johnny Gomes theory of clubhouse chemistry. But as a 3B replacement? Please. I'd rather seen Waylan Smithers.

1 comment:

JM said...

OK, I wasn't going to utter a peep until after Christmas, but a few small points about the Eech. He can still cover ground in the outfield better than many. He still has a better arm than most. He still hacks like crazy off lefties. If he was just used against lefties, he would be a valuable offensive tool and could play OF lightyears better than Soriano, Wells, and the rest of the Geritol bunch. Eech is fine, pretty much where an end-of-career legend should be. The only problem is Girardi doesn't use him against lefties as a rule. HE SITS ONE OF THE BEST LEFTY HITTERS ON THE TEAM AGAINST LEFTIES. This isn't Eech's fault. Girardi is a moron. For some weird reason, he ignores his binder pretty much completely on this score and sends up Vernon or some other righty who has trouble catching up to a fastball or even a fairly quick change-up.

Fair is fair. We can't blame the Eech for poor performance in the one area he's obviously not good anymore--batting against righties. That's manager stuff. Used properly, Eech is a peach.

Let's start a campaign to trade freakin' Girardi and we'd be better off.

I wonder how Eech's porn collection compares to Godzilla's? Not that all Japanese guys have porn collections, but just sayin'.